Turkey to launch Arabic channel

An Arabic-language channel will be launched by Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) from February 21.

Turkish paper Today’s Zaman said the channel would feature several news presenters brought in from Al Jazeera TV.

The new TRT project, TRT Türkiye, will include news and documentaries covering politics, economics and cultural topics. The channel’s target audience includes Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa, and viewers as far as Pakistan.

TRT Istanbul Manager Akir Özbek told the newspaper last week that the TRT Türkiye channel was a project moving in parallel to needs arising from the country’s foreign policy and other developments.

This project also aims to recall the memory of the thousands of years of shared culture and relations between the Turks and Arab people, he said.

“We’ve lived together for many years in this region. Following the First World War, there was a disconnect between us. We’re trying to bridge that gap. The best way to do this is to explain ourselves and our position to them in their own language,” he said.

“We’ve entered into agreements in all the Arabic-speaking countries to enable our channel to be carried there by satellite.”

TRT also plans Farsi and English-language channels and maybe even Russian.

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